From classrooms to design shops, 3D printers seem to be popping everywhere. And as you would expect for a product that appeals to everyone from professional designers to educators to hobbyists, 3D printers vary wildly in the features they offer and the amount they cost.

Based on our extensive evaluations and hours of testing of more than a dozen models in different price ranges, our top overall pick for those on a budget had been the XYZ da Vinci Mini ($259), as its auto-calibration features are helpful to novices and it produces good prints at decent speeds. Unfortunately, the da Vinci Mini is hard to come by these days — XYXPrinting lists it as out of stock, though you can still find it new from some retailers for less than $300. If you need a low-cost 3D printer now, XYZ's da Vinci miniMaker is essentially the same model as the Mini, only it uses USB instead of Wi-Fi to connect to your PC, and it's not as expensive. If you can hold out, though, XYZ announced the $229 da Vinci Nano in January; the compact printer with enclosed sides will ship in early 2018.

Those looking to print in a variety of materials should check out the LulzBot Mini ($1,250), which supports ABS, nylon, polycarbonate and polystyrene. 3D-printing enthusiasts and professional designs will appreciate the two swappable extruders and excellent print quality of the Ultimaker 3 ($3,495). If you're not prepared to spend that much on a printer, we also like the LulzBot Taz 6, which costs about $1,000 less than the latest Ultimaker model and turned out fast, high-quality prints when we reviewed it last year.

Latest News and Updates (Updated Feb. 21)

We've posted a review of the Dremel DigiLab 3D40, a $1,299 printer for home and education users. While we liked the 3D40's ease of use and came away impressed with the quality of its prints, Dremel restricts you to using its proprietary filament, which is more expensive than other options. In contrast, the LulzBot Mini handles a wider range of materials, so it remains our top pick in that category.

New Matter, which made the well-regarded Mod-T 3D printer, is going out of business. While the company will cease operations at the end of February, it says in a letter to customers that it intends to provide limited technical support and keep it store open through mid-summer. After the store closes, you'll no longer be able to use the Wi-Fi printing feature on your existing Mod-T, though you can still print over USB.

What a 3D Printer Costs

3D printers can be very costly if you're looking at the ones used by professional designers or creators who print at heavy volumes. Both the Ultimaker 3 and FormLabs Form 2 cost upward of $3,000. But you can find very capable 3D printers for around $1,000, and prices are even lower for machines aimed at novices, educators and home printing enthusiasts. Prices for entry-level 3D printers are now below $300, and you'll even find some — like Monoprice's $160 Mini Delta 3D Printer that we just reviewed — which push the price even lower.

What to Look for in a 3D Printer

Printer type: There are two main types of 3D printers: FFM (fused filament manufacturing) and SLA (stereo lithography). FFM printers work by melting a plastic filament in a moving printhead to form the model. SLA printers use an ultraviolet (UV) laser to solidify a resin, focusing the laser to form the solid model. FFM printers are generally cheaper, simpler and easier to use, although SLA models like the XYZprinting Nobel 1.0 (around $1,000) are lowering the price difference.

Printing materials: Whichever type of printer you choose, pay attention to the type of material it uses when printing. The filament material used by FFM printers like the LulzBot TAZ 6 is available in several different materials, such as PLA (a brittle, biodegradable material), ABS (the same plastic used in Lego blocks), nylon, TPE (a soft, rubberlike material) and HDPE (a light, tough polystyrene). Many of these materials, particularly PLA and ABS, are available in a huge range of colors. Filaments come in two sizes: 1.75 mm and 3 mm, which are not interchangeable.

SLA printers have fewer options than their FFM counterparts, but printers like the Form 2 can use resins that produce models ranging from very rigid to flexible and rubbery. The best printers can use a wide range of materials, each of which comes with its own strengths and weaknesses. (HDPE, for example, is light and tough, but not suitable for food use, while nylon is food-safe.)

Note that some printers only allow the use of approved materials or materials produced by the same company that made the printer. In that sense, those types of 3D printers are like more traditional paper printers: The manufacturers sell the hardware cheaply and then make money back on the consumables. (Our top budget 3D printer, the da Vinci Mini, only works with PLA filament from manufacturer XYZprinting, for example; however XYZ's filament costs about the same as most third-party materials.) Other 3D printers place no restrictions on the type or origin of the material.

Print volume: All printers have limits on the size of the 3D print they can produce. That limit is defined by the size of the print bed and how far the printer can move the printhead. This is usually measured in cubic inches, but you should also pay attention to each of the individual dimensions, which determine the maximum size 3D print the device can create. So, for example, if a printer like the LulzBot Mini has a print volume of 223 cubic inches (6.2 x 6 x 6 inches), it can print objects that are up to just less than 6 inches high, wide and deep.

Print speed and quality: 3D printing is a slow business, and at present, there's no way to get around this. You should expect a 3- to 4-inch model to typically take between 6 and 12 hours to print, depending on the print quality you select. That's because of the way 3D printing works: The print is constructed in layers. The thicker these layers are, the quicker the print is produced but the lower the print quality is, as the layers become more visible. So, there is a trade-off between print speed and print quality.

The best printers will allow you to determine which way you want to go with this, producing prints quickly or more slowly but at higher quality. The best printers offer a wide range of quality settings, from fast (but low quality) to slow (but high quality).

Best Budget 3D Printer

XYZprinting puts 3D printing within anyone's budget with this $270 device. Easy-to-use software and an auto-calibration feature make the da Vinci Mini a great 3D printer for novices, and you'll get clean, smooth prints at decent speeds. (Printing at higher resolutions slows things down considerably, though.) You're restricted to using PLA filament from XYZ, but since that filament isn't expensive, that's a fair compromise to make for an attractively priced 3D printer with good-looking output. The Mini is hard to find these days, so consider XYZ's da Vinci miniMaker as an alternative: it's the same printer essentially, only it uses USB instead of Wi-Fi.

Best Intermediate 3D Printer

The Lulzbot Mini offers big performance in a small package, complete with carrying handle. It offered high-quality prints in our tests and it can print in several materials beyond the standard PLA and ABS plastic. There is also a high temperature extruder for using such materials as Nylon and metal-filled plastic filament. The Lulzbot Mini supports only a single extruder, though, so you have to manually swap the filament out if you want to use more than one color or type in a print job. The user-friendly Cura software makes your projects easy to execute.

Best Enthusiast 3D Printer

You'll pay a steep price for Ultimaker's latest printer, but if you're a design professional or serious 3D-printing enthusiast, the Ultimaker 3 is more than worth the cost. Print quality is excellent — some of the best we've seen from a 3D printer, even in draft mode — and the Ultimaker 3 supports a wide range of materials. Excellent software makes it easy to manage prints, and a redesigned printhead with two swappable extruders adds to the Ultimaker 3's impressive flexibility.

Best Resin Printer

The latest SLA printer from Formlabs improves on its predecessor by expanding the print area to 224 cubic inches, up from 156 cubic inches on the Form 1+. An updated print mechanism means greater print consistency, and the Form 2 can handle third-party resins — both improvements over past versions. Most importantly, though, the Form 2 produces excellent prints featuring fine detail with clean, sharp edges. Its price tag puts it out of the reach of casual users, but engineers, artists and jewelers will appreciate the Form 2's performance.